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The Abington Citizens Network
where Abington, PA residents can share ideas and join forces to build a better community

                 
ELECTION
ISSUES
__________________________
 

FAIR ELECTION RULES ARE UNKNOWN TO THE PUBLIC
In Abington, yes Abington, we have
campaigners being harassed
signs of others that are taken down
literature stolen
 intimidation  by some (even candidates have resorted to this)
 and the list goes on and on ...

The actual rules are only loosely followed regarding proper poll place practices. This happens because:
 they are known by few
they are not posted  or handed to voters
they are nowhere online to be found .   I just got off the phone with the Mongomery County Voter Services  (9-12-12 ) and while they can send me a volume entitled  "Election Day Digest'  there is no link nor any shareable digital file on the proper polling place procedures.  That means the rules are know only by those "running the show"  - and as I said, not always followed by those folks.  So while we don't have blantant, rampant disregard for fair election practices, we don't have what we need to ensure proper elections either.  In a recent election, for instance, Ward 10-3 in Abington had a discrepancy  of 35 voters between the list and the machines.  Some races are won or lost on much smaller margins than 35 so this is very significant. One Commissioner lost an election by 11 votes.  So accurancy matters and checks and balances matter.   A combination paper and machine ballot might be the best practice - I have seen that in some communities and believe it is a great idea.  It must be done in a manner where the votes cannot be changed on either the one ballot or the other.  So if you vote in a machine, and you receive two copies of your vote, and one of those copies is deposited in a locked box, then you would have a backup system as well as a receipt if you wanted it. 


WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OTHER ISSUES THAT SUPPRESS THE MEANININGFUL VOTE OR EVEN THE ABILITY TO VOTE

 VOTER ID  REQUIREMENTS
    
 The issue I mentioned above with the discrepancy number of 35 at one polling place did not have to do with whether the voters were correct voters or not.  35 votes somewhere were incorrect because the number from the machine differed from the backup count. even if there had been voters  who were not who they said they were, that would not have provided this discrepancy. 
   The  sense that requiring a voter ID from everyone would fix voter fraud would be  a false one. Are there people that vote under a false name  - perhaps the name of someone deceased or someone moved out of the district....? Yes  Is this a huge number of people that are changing elections ?  Probably unlikely .  And the problem is  that requiring an ID, especially before a really GOOD nationawide system is in place to do that,  will only hurt poor people ( who are unlikely to already have a passport or a driver's license  or standard ID and who are less likely to have those documents WITH them ( as a matter of simple organization and good habit)  Putting a system in place where everyone would be required to have some form of ID would take time  and require a great deal of education and accommodation. Perhaps, for instance, if you did not already have an ID, you could still vote if you leave a fingerprint.  But there have been objections to people who are not criminals having to share their fingerprints  ( leaving fingerprints or DNA as a matter of regular interraction then leaves a door open for someone to misuse that material in a way that might harm you ) 
In the 2012 elections no ID ultimately was required because of the sheer number of voters that might be disenfranchised.  

 

WHY DO WE VOTE ON TUESDAY INSTEAD OF THE WEEKEND ?
   In 1845  a law was made that elections would take place on the TUESDAY  that came after the 1st Monday in November . 
The law was made because in 1845 most people travelled by horse and buggy, they could not travel on  the sabbath and it took a day or longer to get to the county seat --- so Tuesday was chosen .
   Since more people are off on the weekend and could more easily get to their polls, there are many movement now to either move voting to the weekend or to make election day a national holiday  or to allow early voting  as is done in Massachussetts .


GERRYMANDERING
  Where politicians decide what their own districts will be based on putting people likely to support them in their own districts  and cariving up the election map to a point of incomprehensibility - taking away the fair rights for a  proper "district" to election it's own representatives in a proper manner .

 

DELEGATES  AND SUPER- DELEGATES
No chance of 1 person  1 vote when  a delegate or superdelegate carries more weight and is not required to vote as he/she has been told to vote by the people who put their vote in this delegate's hands. An absurd system that removes the vote  from the individual voter. 

 

THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM
Yes there are other parties - but they have become "irrelevant as the two major parties have gained so much in numbers that no one else's voice matters . Then by use of Gerrymandering and super-delegating  and other means the leaders of those 2 parties have really taken the vote  away from their own party members

 
    Please feel free to contact us  with your own  information on these topics  and please be sure to    contact us about any information you believe to be incorrect -

 

 


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Abington Township, with John Spiegelman in charge, revamped the entire Township website at the end of 2015 and broke all the links to the information we had archived on this site for you.   In 2017, Manager Richard Manfredi arrived and assigned someone not qualified to redo the entire website again. They not only broke all archived links we had reinstated, but made everything as impossible to find as they could. Nearly all of our comments and recommedations to fix the Township website have been wholly ignored.

So we do need volunteers to work together helping the Township create a site that is functional and accessible.  We will be reinstating links as we find them....if the data is still available. So... please let us know if you find a broken link. Send us the URL of the link  and the name of the page it is on, and if we can, we'll reinstate it.
Thanks for the help.

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